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Crosscutting Technology Development

The NEET Crosscutting Technology Development (CTD) activity provides R&D support to various reactor and fuel cycle technologies, both existing and under development. These include several areas that crosscut multiple nuclear technologies CTD aims to:

Work with other NE R&D programs to identify critical capabilities and common technology needs.

Encourage and lead coordinated research and development activities to deliver capabilities and technologies when needed to ensure NE R&D program success.

Ensure scalability and compatibility of results across NE R&D programs.

Reduce costs of resulting technologies and capabilities.

Leverage programmatic investments to maximize benefits across the federal enterprise.

The capabilities developed through the NEET CTD program are intended to bridge critical gaps to enable advances in DOE-NE R&D programs. The NEET CTD program will address needs and requirements that are common to multiple programs. These needs, in turn, will be translated into actionable R&D activities and coordinated with the other R&D programs. For example, several DOE-NE R&D programs have identified a need for materials and sensors in high-temperature environments (i.e., greater than 600°C). By identifying common requirements that can be coordinated and carried out within NEET, DOE-NE can develop plans that more specifically address the unique needs of the other R&D programs.

The NEET CTD program is also less constrained by the programmatic focus of an individual DOE-NE R&D program. It is able to look beyond immediate technical needs that already exist and identify critical and enabling capabilities that are required to ensure the success of individual R&D programs. Examples of enabling capabilities include advanced tools and methods for proliferation and terrorism risk assessments to inform fuel cycle development; methods and examples of technical bases for digital instrumentation technologies needed to address diversity and defense-in-depth; or computational suites to support new alloy development that transcend today’s approaches to materials development and testing.

The NEET Crosscutting Technology Development program has five technology subprograms: